Child of Destiny

Thursday, 22 February 2018

The Poison of Fear

Hi. How are you today? I hope you are well. I am too; it's hot and bright as fuck and my eyes have had it. They demand less sunlight and laptop time or they're giving me a headache. Well, I ain't trying to leave the house but there's only so much I can do about the laptop time. So I'm resigned to a constant ache in my temples.
Yay.
Life is great.

No, really it is. Cadbury's has a chocolate that contains rum and raisin. Proteins, vitamins and minerals y'all. Also, I'm working on my porch because it's the coolest room in or adjacent to the house AND it has the best view. I wish you could see it; it's quiet and breezy, the sky is blue, the hot sun is out there, the grass is not so green. It could use some water but the view is still great. I live on a hill so I can see real far.
You don't care.
Okay, let's get to it. I've just seen the CNN townhall with the students from the latest school shooting in the USA. Even as tears were running down my eyes as I watched these children the same age as my son talking about their dead friends, I was also, in the back of my mind wondering; where was the town hall for Black Lives Matter?
I didn't want to but I couldn't help it.

It didn't help that the audience and the participants were a sea of white, repeating many of the things same things people marching for Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin and Philando Castile were saying. But while the latter were labeled as terrorists, the former were given a town hall broadcast worldwide. And I'm not even trying to hate or diminish their loss. I support their efforts 100%. CNN handled the death of Philando Castile with extensive coverage.
I'm more disillusioned at Obama. I mean even this buffoon in the White House met with the parents and the students even though or probably because of the conspiracy theories about them. Why didn't Obama meet BLM people? Because he didn't want to appear partisan? It just emphasized so much how little those lives really mattered. It didn't help that Oprah showed open support for these students after her loud silence about BLM. I felt the slap in the face and I'm not even personally involved.
You know things are really bad though because white people are on the streets. The white people are the ones shouting, "Stop Killing Our Children!"
I did tell you so.
I TOLD YOU it would come to this.

You cannot let people take lives with impunity and not expect that that impunity won't touch you one day. You cannot let hatred permeate society and not expect that hatred to turn on you and yours. And I mean that worldwide.
Chadwick Boseman said an interesting thing on the view. He said that slavery (and colonialism) does not just enslave the African. It enslaves everyone who is involved in it because you are imprisoned in a certain paradigm unable to step out of whatever role the situation has given you. The results are racism and misogyny which are just symptoms of the problem. Not of hate, but of fear. Fear of taking a step away from the paradigm and having to face who you are and what you have done and been without the protections of those paradigms.
I used to follow Mark Pellegrino on twitter before I watched Black Panther and realized such people are a waste of time. Anyway, the last "discussion" me and him and his followers got into had me thinking about what the reluctance is to ban assault weapons. It seems such a no-brainer that it's difficult to understand why anyone would oppose it. But speaking to these people trying to promote Islamophobia in the guise of intellectual discourse and then trying to support the perpetuation of assault rifles to 'defend themselves' I realized one thing.
These people are mortally afraid.
Of black people.

They're stockpiling for whatever revolution they're expecting to not be televised.
And my initial reaction was burst out laughing at how ridiculous they are. But then it just hit me about how impossible the situation is. You cannot reason with fear. You cannot discuss with fear. These people will say whatever they have to or do whatever they have to, to keep their guns.
These are the fruits of slavery. This is what happens when you try to subjugate a people. Your legacy is a constant fear of them rising up and destroying you.
The hope though is that the new generation is free of the burden of fear. And if they are, they can begin to heal the nation. That is if they don't grow up to be their parents.
Speaking of fearless, fierce forces of nature...my Queen, Rihanna had her birthday yesterday. Let us all wish her many happy returns of the day and remember;

In other worse news, two hundred people have been killed in Ghouta in Syria in just the last week. There is a twitter campaign to raise awareness today, 22/2/2018 at 7pm GMT. Tweet #saveGhouta at that time.
People are so focused on the buffoon in Washington that they ignore the real threat to peace, freedom and democracy around the world. Vladimir Putin. He's Adolf Hitler in the making. Just more stealthy about it. You heard it here first.

1 comment:

I've been thinking about this a lot lately too, and I completely agree with pretty much all the points you made me. I also have been trying to figure out how ANYONE could support gun ownership (especially semi-automatics) in our current climate. And, like you, I came to this realization that people are scared of some sort of uprising---and I agree it's hard to fight that fear with logic. Logic can't combat it. So, what's the answer? I wish I knew. I guess we just have to keep fighting. Sigh.